SECOND INTERVIEW.
DISTILLER. (Seeing Conscience approach, and beginning to tremble.) What, so soon and so early at your post again? I did hope for a short respite.
CONSCIENCE. O, I am distressed--I cannot hold my peace. I am pained at my very heart.
DISTILLER. Do be composed, I beseech you, and hear what I have to say.
Since our last interview I have resolved to sell out, and I expect the purchaser on in a very few days.
CONSCIENCE. What will _he_ do with the establishment when he gets it?
DISTILLER. You must ask him, and not me. But whatever he may do with it, _I_ shall be clear.
CONSCIENCE. I wish I could be sure of that; but let us see. Though you will not make poison by the hundred barrels any longer yourself, you will sell this laboratory of death to another man, for the same horrid purpose. You will not, with your own hands, go on forging daggers for maniacs to use upon themselves and their friends, provided you can get some one to take your business at a fair price. You will no longer drag the car of Juggernaut over the bodies of prostrate devotees, if you can _sell out the privilege to good advantage_!
DISTILLER. Was ever any man"s conscience so captious before? You seem determined not to be satisfied with any thing. But beware; by pushing matters in this way you will produce a violent "reaction." Even professors of religion will not bear it. For myself, I wish to treat you with all possible respect; but forbearance itself must have its limits.
CONSCIENCE. Possibly you may be able to hold me in check a little longer; but I am all the while gathering strength for an onset which you cannot withstand; and if you cannot bear these kind remonstrances now, how will you grapple with "the worm that never dies?"
DISTILLER. Enough, enough. I will obey your voice. But why so pale and deathlike?
CONSCIENCE. O, I am sick, I am almost suffocated. These tartarean fumes, these dreadful forebodings, these heart-rending sights, and above all, my horrid dreams, I cannot endure them. There comes our nearest neighbor, stealing across the lots, with his jug and half bushel of rye.
What is his errand, and where is his hungry, shivering family? And see there too, that tattered, half-starved boy, just entering the yard with a bottle--who sent him here at this early hour? All these barrels--where are the wretched beings who are to consume this liquid fire, and to be consumed by it?
DISTILLER. Spare me, spare me, I beseech you. By going on at this rate a little longer you will make me as nervous as yourself.
CONSCIENCE. But I cannot close this interview till I have related one of the dreams to which I just alluded. It was only last night that I suffered in this way, more than tongue can tell. The whole terrific vision is written in letters of fire upon the tablet of my memory; and I feel it all the while burning deeper and deeper.
I thought I stood by a great river of melted lava, and while I was wondering from what mountain or vast abyss it came, suddenly the field of my vision was extended to the distance of several hundred miles, and I perceived that, instead of springing from a single source, this rolling torrent of fire was fed by numerous tributary streams, and these again by smaller rivulets. And what do you think I heard and beheld, as I stood petrified with astonishment and horror? There were hundreds of poor wretches struggling and just sinking in the merciless flood. As I contemplated the scene still more attentively, the confused noise of boisterous and profane merriment, mingled with loud shrieks of despair, saluted my ears. The hair of my head stood up--and looking this way and that way, I beheld crowds of men, women, and children, thronging down to the very margin of the river--some eagerly bowing down to slake their thirst with the consuming liquid, and others convulsively striving to hold them back. Some I saw actually pushing their neighbors headlong from the treacherous bank, and others encouraging them to plunge in, by holding up the fiery temptation to their view. To insure a sufficient depth of the river, so that destruction might be made doubly sure, I saw a great number of men, and some whom I knew to be members of the church, laboriously turning their respective contributions of the glowing and hissing liquid into the main channel. This was more than I could bear. I was in perfect torture. But when I expostulated with those who were nearest to the place where I stood, they coolly answered, _This is the way in which we get our living!_
But what shocked me more than all the rest, and curdled every drop of blood in my veins, was the sight which I had of this very distillery pouring out its tributary stream of fire! And O, it distracts, it maddens me to think of it. There you yourself stood feeding the torrent which had already swallowed up some of your own family, and threatened every moment to sweep you away! This last circ.u.mstance brought me from the bed, by one convulsive bound, into the middle of the room; and I awoke in an agony which I verily believe I could not have sustained for another moment.
DISTILLER. I will feed the torrent no longer. The fires of my distillery shall be put out. From this day, from this hour, I renounce the manufacture of ardent spirit for ever.
DIALOGUE II.
WHOLESALE DEALER"S COUNTING-ROOM.
CONSCIENCE. (Looking over the ledger with a serious air.) What is that last invoice from the West Indies?
RUM-DEALER. Only a few casks of fourth proof, for particular customers.
CONSCIENCE. And that domestic poison, via New Orleans; and on the next page, that large consignment, via Erie Ca.n.a.l?
DEALER. O, nothing but two small lots of prime whiskey, such as we have been selling these twenty years. But why these chiding inquiries? They disquiet me exceedingly. And to tell you the plain truth, I am more than half offended at this morbid inquisitiveness.
CONSCIENCE. Ah, I am afraid, as I have often told you, that this is a bad business; and the more I think of it, the more it troubles me.
DEALER. Why so? You are always preaching up industry as a Christian virtue, and my word for it, were I to neglect my business, and saunter about the hotels and steamboat wharves, as some do, you would fall into convulsions, as if I had committed the unpardonable sin.
CONSCIENCE. Such pettish quibbling is utterly unworthy of your good sense and ordinary candor. You know, as well as I do, the great difference between industry in some safe and honest calling, and driving a business which carries poverty and ruin to thousands of families.
DEALER. _Honest_ industry! This is more cruel still. You have known me too long to throw out such insinuations; and besides, it is notorious, that some of the first merchants in our city are engaged, far more extensively, in the same traffic.
CONSCIENCE. Be it so. "To their own Master they stand or fall." But if fair dealing consists in "doing as we would be done by," how can a man of your established mercantile and Christian reputation sustain himself, if he continues to deal in an article which he knows to be more destructive than all the plagues of Egypt?
DEALER. Do you intend, then, to make me answerable for all the mischief that is done by ardent spirit, in the whole state and nation? What I sell is a mere drop of the bucket, compared with the consumption of a single county. Where is the proof that the little which my respectable customers carry into the country, with their other groceries, ever does any harm? How do you know that it helps to make such a frightful host of drunkards and vagabonds? And if it did, whose fault would it be? I never gave nor sold a gla.s.s of whiskey to a tippler in my life. Let those who will drink to excess, and make brutes of themselves, answer for it.
CONSCIENCE. Yes, certainly _they_ must answer for it; but will that excuse those who furnish the poison? Did you never hear of abettors and accessaries, as well as princ.i.p.als in crime? When Judas, in all the agony of remorse and despair, threw down the thirty pieces of silver before the chief priests and elders, exclaiming, _I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood_--they coolly answered, _What is that to us? See thou to that._ And was it therefore nothing to them? Had they no hand in that cruel tragedy? Was it nothing to Pilate--nothing to Herod--nothing to the mult.i.tude who were consenting to the crucifixion of the Son of G.o.d--because they did not drive the nails and thrust the spear?
O, when I think of what you are doing to destroy the bodies and souls of men, I cannot rest. It terrifies me at all hours of the night. Often and often, when I am just losing myself in sleep, I am startled by the most frightful groans and unearthly imprecations, coming out of these hogsheads. And then, those long processions of rough-made coffins and beggared families, which I dream of, from nightfall till daybreak, they keep me all the while in a cold sweat, and I can no longer endure them.
DEALER. Neither can I. Something must be done. You have been out of your head more than half the time for this six months. I have tried all the ordinary remedies upon you without the least effect. Indeed, every new remedy seems only to aggravate the disease. O, what would not I give for the discovery of some anodyne which would lay these horrible phantasms.
The case would be infinitely less trying, if I could sometimes persuade you, for a night or two, to let me occupy a different apartment from yourself; for when your spasms come on, one might as well try to sleep with embers in his bosom, as where you are.
CONSCIENCE. Would it mend the matter at all, if, instead of sometimes dreaming, I were to be always wide awake?
DEALER. Ah, there"s the grand difficulty. For I find that when you do wake up, you are more troublesome than ever. _Then_ you are always harping upon my being a professor of religion, and bringing up some text of Scripture, which might as well be let alone, and which you would not ring in my ears, if you had any regard to my peace, or even your own.
More than fifty times, within a month, have you quoted, "_By their fruits ye shall know them._" In fact, so uncharitable have you grown of late, that from the drift of some of your admonitions, a stranger would think me but little, if any, better than a murderer. And all because some vagabond or other may possibly happen to shorten his days by drinking a little of the identical spirit which pa.s.ses through my hands.
CONSCIENCE. You do me bare justice when you say that I have often reproved you, and more earnestly of late than I formerly did. But my remonstrances have always been between you and me alone. If I have charged you with the guilt of hurrying men to the grave and to h.e.l.l, by this vile traffic, it has not been upon the house-top. I cannot, it is true, help knowing how it grieves your brethren, gratifies the enemies of religion, and excites the scorn of drunkards themselves, to see your wharf covered with the fiery element; but I speak only in your own ear.
To yourself I have wished to prove a faithful monitor, though I have sad misgivings, at times, even with regard to that. You will bear me witness, however, that I have sometimes trembled exceedingly, for fear that I should be compelled, at last, to carry the matter up by indictment to the tribunal of Eternal Justice.
To avoid this dreadful necessity, let me once more reason the case with you in few words. You know perfectly well, that ardent spirit kills its tens of thousands in the United States every year; and there is no more room to doubt that many of these lives are destroyed by the very liquor which you sell, than if you saw them staggering under it into the drunkard"s grave. How then can you possibly throw off bloodguiltiness, with the light which you now enjoy? In faithfulness to your soul, and to Him whose vicegerent I am, I cannot say less than this, especially if you persist any longer in the horrible traffic?
DEALER. Pardon me, my dear Conscience, if, under the excitement of the moment, I complained of your honest and continued importunity. Be a.s.sured, there is no friend in the world, with whom I am so desirous of maintaining a good understanding as with yourself. And for your relief and satisfaction, I now give you my solemn pledge, that I will close up this branch of my business as soon as possible. Indeed, I have commenced the process already. My last consignments are less, by more than one half, than were those of the preceding year; and I intend that, when another year comes about, my books shall speak still more decidedly in my favor.
CONSCIENCE. These resolutions would be perfectly satisfactory, if they were in the _present tense_. But if it was wrong to sell five hundred casks last year, how can it be right to sell two hundred this year, and one hundred next? If it is criminal to poison forty men at one time, how can it be innocent to poison twenty at another? If you may not throw a hundred firebrands into the city, how will you prove that you may throw one?
DEALER. Very true, very true--but let us wave this point for the present. It affects me very strangely.
CONSCIENCE. How long, then, will it take to dry up this fountain of death?
DEALER. Don"t call it so, I beseech you; but I intend to be entirely out of the business in two or three years, at farthest.
CONSCIENCE. Two or three years! Can you, then, after all that has pa.s.sed between us, persist two or three years longer in a contraband traffic? I verily thought, that when we had that long conference two or three months ago, you resolved to close the concern at once; and that, when we parted, I had as good as your promise, that you would. Surely, you cannot so soon have forgotten it.
DEALER. No, I remember that interview but too well; for I was never so unhappy in my life. I did almost resolve, and more than half promise, as you say. But after I had time to get a little composed, I thought you had pushed matters rather too far; and that I could convince you of it, at a proper time. I see, however, that the attempt would be fruitless.
But as I am anxious for a compromise, let me ask whether, if I give away all the profits of this branch of my business to the Bible Society, and other religious inst.i.tutions, till I can close it up, you will not be satisfied?
CONSCIENCE. Let me see. Five hundred dollars, or one hundred dollars, earned to promote the cause of religion by selling poison! By killing husbands, and fathers, and brothers, and torturing poor women and children! It smells of blood--and can G.o.d possibly accept of such an offering?
DEALER. So then, it seems, I must stop the sale at once, or entirely forfeit what little charity you have left.
CONSCIENCE. You must. Delay is death--death to the consumer at least; and how can you flatter yourself that it will not prove your own eternal death? My convictions are decisive, and be a.s.sured, I deal thus plainly because I love you, and cannot bear to become your everlasting tormentor.
DIALOGUE III.